English Breakfast, Passion Fruit
by Miss Espresso
Summary: The Doctor, Amy, and even Rory all resemble the drinks they like.


Amy liked her tea fruity and clear and warm with a little dip of honey in it, when she was tired and they'd had a long day together. She stood next to the main control panel in the TARDIS, silently waiting for it to finish brewing. She let her long hair go all around her, one long ginger strand behind her pale ear.

"Good afternoon, Amy Pond," The Doctor said as he hopped down the step to the landing she was standing in. His bowtie was askew, with his front bangs pushed up in all sorts of directions. Without pausing to think, Amy reached out and smoothed out the Doctor's dark fringe, her long lavender painted nails gently scratching his scalp as she smiled to him with the utmost affection. The Doctor looked down with a sheepish laugh.

In his hands was a cup of scalding black English Breakfast.

They were different, in that way. They were like the teas they preferred. Amy was transient and warm, always moving, hard to pin, and with a tiny drop of sweetness beyond the veil of explosive color. Amy Pond was secrets that she tried to keep close to her heart but flavored every inch about her anyway. As much as she tried to hide it, she wasn't the bright apple and pomegranate flavors - she wasn't Kissograms and short skirts and smashing around through time and space in the TARDIS, thought she did love that all. She was that one, single drop of honey. She was holding the Doctor's hand and looking up at the stars. Amy Pond was inextricably human.

The Doctor was a bitter taste. Brisk and shocking at first. A flash of all of these things, new information, shocking ideas and nebulas and concepts that could make anyone's mind spin to keep up. And the Doctor didn't temper his tea with cream. It was clear and dark with a ring of light brown around the top of the liquid in his cup. Unlike Amy, he didn't hide himself. But his tea was translucent and like always, Amy could see right through him, even if she didn't always comprehend the universe she stared into.

And the Doctor kept his tea hot, because if he let himself cool, the memories would come back. The memory of leaving Amy behind for so long after promising her just five minutes, of her face upon waking up chained to her radiator, her beautiful, honey face. He'd remember the pain he'd been through in his 900 years even if it was changing all the time; monsters and murder and women and Amy Pond, the girl who was a little girl when things were little problems, five minutes ago, just five minutes - Amy, in her wedding dress, marrying a coffee cup man who promised to never leave her.

"You need to buy yourself a mirror, Doctor. I can't go gallivanting through the universe with someone so out of shape," Amy teased. Her hand went back to clasping her tea to her, which she sipped, still grinning to her Doctor.

"You do anyway," he said with a slight pang of defensiveness. "And I'm fine with gallivanting around on my own if you are so picky, thank you."

But he wasn't. Never would be. Never will be. Not when he had once had Amy. Lovely Amy Pond, bright as the sun and bolder than lightning, not when he'd once felt her hands brush away his bangs. She made him human, if but for a moment. When he looked at Amy Pond, even as she pulled a pout at his comment about possibly not traveling through time and space without her, she was a word that always escaped the back of the Doctor's mind, out a door, locked the door, away away away. A word he couldn't ever quite think of. On the tip of his tongue.

"Don't worry," he said with a sudden smile. And like he always made her do, he kissed her forehead sweetly and poked her brilliantly fat cheeks and raised his brows, saying, "I'm only joking."

"Time-traveling aliens don't joke around. You always..." Amy set down her tea cup and walked away.

"Always what?" he asked, voice strained with a slip of panic. He put his tea cup down besides hers. She was standing on the edge of the landing, leaning on a railing. Her eyes looked at something in the air. They were wet. "Always what?"

"Leave. You leave anyway."

"Oh Amy." It was all he could say. All he had were words. He couldn't put his arm around her and grasp her and never let her go. She wasn't his.

He wanted to but she wasn't his.

Instead, her touched the crown of her head and pressed their foreheads together. "Amy, oh Amy."

"What?" she hissed, never catching up with what he was thinking fast enough.

"I thought of the word."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, voice harsh.

"Love. The word's love."

So she wasn't his. So their teacups sat next to each other and grew cold. So the Doctor transported them to a beach at night and they walked and talked and it was fine because they were together. So Amy Pond had dripped honey into the Doctor's heart that made him feel great terrible things. So Amy Pond let him escape into her world with him, walking with their toes in the sand, laughing, her hand sometimes finding his waist (because no matter what, he was hers) and holding him. So they were more than their leaves and the water that made them.

"I thought you were tired," the Doctor said. Amy just laughed.

"Not around you, Doctor."

The Doctor smiled.


End file.
